The joy of a fresh start

I’ve gone through the full cycle of feelings toward new year’s resolutions, from childish dedication to cynical 30-something rejection to a renewed appreciation.

It’s not that new year’s resolutions really mean anything. Let’s be honest. I could dedicate my body to the gym on any day of the year. There’s nothing magical about a Bonza Bottler date (though it’s fun to know that you can celebrate them each month). My house won’t be any cleaner next week than it is now most likely, no matter how many articles hit my feed this week telling me how to de-clutter, live simply, or get everything organized.

But the older I get, the more I appreciate a fresh start.

One of my favorite and long-lasting literary quotes comes from a book in the Anne of Green Gables series: “Tomorrow is a fresh new day with no mistakes in it.” I struggle to remember exact words for anything I read; the fact that Anne kept those words in her heart spoke to me in my adolescence with such force that I never forgot them. I might be all grown up now but I still fumble around and muck it up and have to retrace my steps and turn life sideways sometimes to see where to go next. Knowing that tomorrow is yet unspoiled by my actions gives me hope.

Considering how shitty 2016 has been overall for pretty much everyone, I’m not sorry to see it go.

2017 is a fresh new year, with no mistakes in it. (Yet.)
His mercies are new every morning.
Here’s to a new start.

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You know you’ve entered a temple when disagreement is treated as sacrilege. The animosity directed toward NFL players kneeling at the anthem, protesting police brutality and structural racism, is the sort of acrimony we reserve for infidels….

This response to the kneeling controversy tells us something about the state of American civil religion and the way it accommodates — and then deforms — traditional religious communities.

The tropes of “God and country” or “faith and the flag” are almost always instances where country and flag domesticate faith in God. Or, to put this in terms that religious folk should understand: These liturgies of civil religion are covert modes of idolatry. The rank and priority are reversed; our political identities trump all others.

This is how stadiums became temples of nationalism. When the Constitution functions like Scripture, and the pledge serves as our creed, and the flag is revered like the cross, and the national anthem becomes our hymn, and the hand over heart is a sacred expression like the sign of the cross, then a swelling patriotism becomes our religion and dissenters are heretics.